Harry Potter and the xueba wizard: A Legend at Hogwarts

"I choose to move on."

Adrian Blackwood didn't hesitate—not for a second. , to him , was a variable; something that could be acquired through hard work, clever planning, or a dozen other means. But to have reached this point, to abandon the challenge now would have been a betrayal of everything Ravenclaw stood for. No—he wanted to understand what Rowena Ravenclaw had truly left behind. The real reward.

"The game is over."

The ethereal voice echoed again, clear and absolute.

A sharp sensation jolted through Adrian's gut—like a magical hook yanking him through space. His breath caught, and when he blinked again, he was no longer in the drifting celestial tower. He now stood in a room that resembled an office, but was far more arcane and luxurious than anything in Hogwarts—even more opulent than Dumbledore's study.

Bookshelves carved from enchanted black walnut lined every wall, stretching from floor to ceiling and packed with tomes and scrolls in every conceivable language—Latin, Aramaic, Greek, Old English, Runic, Gobbledegook, and even some in Mermish. The thick tomes' leather spines shimmered with protective enchantments, and arcane diagrams shifted across their surfaces. Crystal decanters and beakers bubbled softly atop four circular worktables, surrounded by bubbling potion vials of many colors and consistencies. Some tubes that snaked into the walls were filled with pale white liquids, inside which pulsed and writhed strange living essences, as if half-formed spells or bottled spirits.

The scent was overpowering—a heady mix of musty parchment, dried rose hips, crushed bezoars, and faint sulfur, undercut by something uniquely alchemical. Adrian wrinkled his nose. The room was a fusion of Snape's dungeon classroom and the Hogwarts library at midnight.

"Greetings, Adrian Blackwood."

The voice that followed was not cold in tone, but it resonated with majesty and distance—like a wind echoing down the corridors of time.

Adrian spun toward it, wide-eyed. Sitting behind a massive semicircular obsidian desk, inlaid with sapphires that pulsed softly with power, was a figure unlike any he had encountered before.

She was radiant and terrifying.

A tall, translucent woman—ethereal in form, yet sharply defined in presence—sat on a throne-like chair. Her beauty was unearthly, the kind that inspired reverence rather than desire. Her elegant features showed no signs of age, but her eyes… her eyes told a different story. Half-lidded and observant, they gleamed like moonlit steel—piercing, ancient, and saturated with memories and intellect. Though her form shimmered like a ghost, her aura was far more commanding than even the Hogwarts portraits of the four founders.

Adrian knew who she was at once. He had seen her marble likeness in the Ravenclaw common room countless times.

Rowena Ravenclaw.

But here, she wasn't just a statue—this was a preserved echo of the real witch. One whose mind had shaped part of the magical world.

"You Ravenclaws are indeed… greedy," she said at last.

Her words drifted like verse—sweet, empty, but threaded with steel. With a flick of her hand, a high-backed chair slid across the stone floor to rest in front of the desk. Adrian sat without being told.

He understood the implication. "Ravenclaw"—literally "raven's claw"—could also mean a greedy grasping talon. She was testing him, even in conversation.

"You should know the selection values of Ravenclaw better than anyone, Dean Ravenclaw," Adrian replied respectfully. "Above all, intelligence. But also discernment, fairness, curiosity, insight, independence, and the pursuit of knowledge without fear. Ravenclaws crave not just answers—but understanding."

He gave a deep, practiced bow. Adrian had never believed in blindly idolizing figures—but this wasn't just any witch. She was a founder. A pioneer. And, strangely, she felt familiar, as if a quiet part of her lingered within every enchanted archway of Ravenclaw Tower.

Her expression softened slightly.

"As a challenger who has reached this final threshold, I consider you worthy of using my name. You may call me Rowena—or Dean, if you prefer." Her voice held authority, but not dismissal.

"Yes, Dean."

In Adrian's mind, Rowena Ravenclaw was above titles. But calling her "Rowena" on a first encounter still felt improper. Though Flitwick was his head of house, this was the true architect of Ravenclaw's ideals.

Rowena studied him closely, her sharp gaze never blinking. "Since you have arrived at this place, you are eligible for the final test. If you succeed, the treasure I preserved through the ages will be yours."

Adrian sat up straighter. "What is the final test?" he asked, his confidence unwavering, despite the prickling of tension down his spine.

Rowena leaned forward. "To craft a true Philosopher's Stone. One capable of turning any base metal to gold… and bestowing immortality."

Adrian's eyes widened slightly. "A Philosopher's Stone? Forgive me for asking—but why would you, in this form, wish for something like that?"

He asked not out of skepticism, but true curiosity. She wasn't alive. She wasn't even a ghost. This was, at best, a soul-echo—like a sliver of thought or memory preserved by ancient magic, similar to Dumbledore's use of the Pensieve, or perhaps the enchantment behind Tom Riddle's diary.

"You wonder," Rowena said, her voice still light as snow, "why a being like me—a lingering thought, a shadow—would desire a Philosopher's Stone? Immortality seems… redundant, no?"

Adrian nodded slowly. "Yes, Dean. I only meant—this magic… it's meant for the living. Yet you, with all due respect, are something… beyond."

A pause followed. The sapphire-glow of the obsidian desk seemed to pulse in time with her next breath, though she didn't breathe.

Rowena's smile was faint, almost tragic. "I do not desire the Stone for myself, Adrian Blackwood. I created this trial for someone else. One day, a mind sharp enough… a heart brave enough… might come and understand that the true value of knowledge lies not in immortality or gold—but in the making of the impossible. The Philosopher's Stone is only the surface."

Adrian felt something stir inside him—a chill that wasn't cold. A calling.

This wasn't about reward. It never had been.

It was about legacy. About building something greater than one's self.

And for the first time since entering Hogwarts, Adrian realized: this was a test not just of mind—but of soul.

"My daughter Helena stole my diadem," Rowena Ravenclaw said quietly, her voice an ethereal melody layered with centuries of regret. "I sent the Bloody Baron—Barrow—to retrieve her. But he… they argued. In his fury, he killed her."

Her gaze, heavy with ancient sorrow, never left Adrian's face.

"I later discovered a ritual that could theoretically bring back the dead," she continued, "but I lacked several key materials. There was no way to complete it. I thought, perhaps, the Resurrection Stone could restore her—but the more I delved into soul research, the more I understood its limitations. The Resurrection Stone does not revive the truly dead. It summons shades—echoes from the realm beyond, more real than memory, but less real than flesh."

Adrian's breath caught. He remembered how Harry Potter had used the Resurrection Stone during the Battle of Hogwarts. The figures he summoned—his parents, Sirius Black, Lupin—they had been comforting, yes, but spectral. Not alive.

"For Helena, who became a ghost out of guilt for her betrayal… the Stone was meaningless," Rowena continued, her voice lower now. "She remains in this world, tethered by remorse, unable to face me."

There was no bitterness in her voice—only the quiet ache of a mother's enduring sorrow. Adrian sensed she had rehearsed this story in her thoughts for centuries, readying it for someone who might one day come far enough to hear it.

"Still…" Adrian began hesitantly, "you don't seem to need a Philosopher's Stone now."

Rowena gave a wistful, almost self-mocking smile. "Yes. At first, I pursued it as a way to accompany my daughter longer—to linger in this world without becoming a ghost myself. But I feared the same fate. The thought of sacrificing everything—my mind, my identity—to live half a life terrified me. I wanted more."

She paused, as if weighing whether to continue.

"In the end, before I could perform the final furnace temperature test for the Stone, I… passed from the physical realm," she said at last. "So I divided a portion of my soul—not as a Horcrux, but as a memory echo—something akin to the magical thinking portraits at Hogwarts. This remnant was sealed within this challenge."

Adrian's mind reeled. Her expertise in soul magic, he realized, was as formidable as her achievements in alchemy. Unlike Voldemort's Horcruxes, which fragmented the soul and left their creator twisted, Rowena's soul-splitting seemed elegant, intentional—a last resort of purpose rather than fear.

He remembered how Voldemort's fragments had been unstable, even mad. Yet Rowena Ravenclaw's memory-soul had endured for nearly a thousand years, fully sentient, coherent, and composed. A testament to her mastery.

"Adrian," she said now, her expression solemn, "do you accept the challenge? If you can complete the final steps as outlined in my manuscript, all my magical knowledge, artifacts, and wealth will be yours. If you fail, I will erase your memories of this place and return you safely."

Her half-lidded eyes sharpened into brilliant focus. For a moment, Adrian felt as if the very fabric of his Occlumency defenses—painstakingly built over his training—were torn open. He was completely exposed beneath her gaze, as if even his thoughts were laid bare.

He noticed something peculiar—she had called him Adrian Ravenclaw. Not Blackwood.

It wasn't an insult. If anything, it felt like an invitation. A recognition of lineage—not by blood, but by intellect.

She wasn't as cold as the textbooks made her seem. In Hogwarts: A History, Rowena Ravenclaw was described as austere, distant, almost inhumanly logical. But here, face to face with a remnant of her mind, Adrian felt… warmth. A deep, mournful humanity buried beneath centuries of solitude.

He opened his hands slightly, signaling surrender. "I accept the challenge," Adrian said softly, "but… I have no materials."

Rowena gave no verbal answer. Instead, she rotated a glass orb embedded in the desk counterclockwise three times. The runes etched on the wall to the right shimmered and disappeared—revealing a vast, high-ceilinged alchemy laboratory.

It was breathtaking.

Crystalline shelves brimmed with rare ingredients—powdered moonstone, salamander blood, frozen dragon bile, bezoars, and other substances Adrian had only read about in obscure texts. A single towering furnace, similar to the enchanted kiln in Nicolas Flamel's memoirs, glowed softly near the far wall.

Rowena handed Adrian a thick scroll of aged parchment, and as he took it, her form flickered—and vanished.

Adrian unrolled the scroll at once. The ink was old but magically preserved. The writing surprised him—not the elegant, delicate script one might expect of a founder, but jagged, cramped letters. Some notes were written at angles, as though scribbled mid-thought. Many pages were filled with diagrams, meticulously labeled with runes and alchemical symbols.

The most vital ingredient—the rough core of the Philosopher's Stone—was, according to the scroll, already inside the main furnace. But the precise instructions on how to create this core had been intentionally omitted. Adrian realized it at once: Rowena had ripped the key section out. A final barrier.

Other ingredients, however, were listed clearly: alchemical camphor, purified quicksilver, powdered sulfur, yellow blood salt, unicorn blood free of curses, and even a stabilized crystal of Alexium—a material referenced in Jebo's lost notes. Everything else was organized and labeled. Even the rotational sequences for the transmutation rings were included.

Adrian's fingers tightened on the scroll. He turned to his storage pouch and withdrew a worn but beloved volume: The Advanced Treatises of Jebir ibn Hayyan. One recipe—the Sage's Stone—came close to matching Rowena's instructions. The terminology differed, but the core theory was the same: elemental harmonization, soul stability, and symbolic purification.

The most significant discrepancy lay in the furnace temperature. Jebir's method required an intense and sustained flame, even higher than dragonfire—while Rowena's method called for a slow, controlled rise in heat, precisely timed with lunar phase notations. Yet both omitted the one thing Adrian needed most: the rough stone formation technique.

But he had made up his mind.

No matter the risk—no matter if it meant triggering an unstable reaction—Adrian Blackwood would gamble everything on his interpretation of Jebir's method.

With careful wandwork, he cast Caliditas Alchimica, increasing the furnace temperature according to Jebir's diagram.

The alchemical fire flared to life.

The test had begun.